Are there any young filmmakers out there that have really grabbed your attention?

Well, is… Paul Thomas Anderson a young gun? I think he’s a terrific filmmaker. There are. I can’t think of them all off the top of my head, but he’s one that springs to mind. Naturally, the guys that I’m always crazy about are more from my generation—Scorsese, Francis Coppola, Oliver Stone, and people like that.

Robert Downey Jr. was interviewed on the Grantland podcast, and PTA and IV came up. A few quotes:

"But I'm really fortunate in that, first and foremost, I'm friends with PTA. And he is so much more than a filmmaker. He's just someone that you just go: if I could spend a big chunk of every day with this guy, I'd be a better person. So, that's great. And he and my dad are pals, so the three of us are going out to dinner tomorrow. By the way, that, to me, is as exciting a moment as literally being, not just front and centre, but you know, Steely Dan is playing at your birthday party."

On Phoenix in the role and his own supposed involvement in the project:

"A - nobody should have done that movie besides him. B - Paul was never really thinking about me for it. And it's not because he's cryptic. It's because he's been on...you know, it's kind of like there's a Scorsese and De Niro thing. At this point, I would [...] be happy to offer Mr. Anderson any and every film I do from now on. I mean, I love watching what they do."

This podcast is a highlight of my week. The website describes it as "the brainchild and passion project of Karina Longworth (founder of Cinematical.com, former film critic for LA Weekly), who writes, narrates, records and edits each episode." "a storytelling podcast exploring the secret and/or forgotten histories of Hollywood’s first century".

She also happens to be Rian Johnson's girlfriend.

Anyway during her one year anniversary, ask-me-anything episode she named PTA her favourite living American filmmaker (sorry, Rian) and shared a few quick, kind words on The Master.

She's not a big celeb or anything and I probably should have just put this in the podcast forum but I figured more people would read it here and maybe listen to the podcast so she will in turn continue to make it.

The current season is centred around Charles Manson and his run-in with/affect on Hollywood in the late 60's. Check it out.

Today on You Made It Weird Artie Lange is the guest with Judd Apatow as co-host. Adam Sandler comes up in conversation in the last 25 minutes.

Judd Apatow: We do our show "Love" for Netflix, and they always say "Any Adam Sandler movie, if we put it up in a country where it's never run, it instantly is like GIGANTIC." Like you can put "The Wedding Singer" up in Peru and it just explodes, he's just really beloved around the World.

Artie Lange: Well, after "Punch Drunk Love", the French thought he was like Jerry Lewis, right? He was just winning festivals... (laughs)

JA: "Punch Drunk" is one of my favorite movies of all time. I cried hard. I cried for like 30 straight minutes at the end of that movie.

Pete Holmes: You told me the funny PT Anderson thing about that movie, remember? You said like, he was just making a regular romantic comedy, like he didn't intend to make a quirky one. He's just so...

JA: Yeah, I don't know when that changed. He said he wanted to make like a romantic comedy, but I think he's such a genius it just comes out in a unique way.

AL: He wanted Adam to play it more straight, then?

JA: No, no. Maybe this isn't even true, but he was trying to just make a funny romantic comedy and he can't help but do something that's not innovative and daring and incredible. The funny thing is that Adam would say to me like, "You know, I'm doing You and my brother." I watch the movie and I see it, and I think it's why it makes me cry, because he knew me when I was a kid. I was terrible with women, just scared to death. And I see it in the behavior, especially the moment when he's talking about the DJ. He's trying to tell the woman the story about this funny thing the DJ did, but he's just bombing, he's just bombing on this date trying to explain this joke. And I thought "That's how I sound, Adam, everyday." Because I would always live with him and just say "You gotta watch Norm Macdonald. Norm Macdonald is SO funny." And try to tell him Norm jokes and Sandler would go "I don't give a fuck about Norm Macdonald! I'm trying to get famous, why would I care about what anyone else is doing?"

You’ve talked about being obsessed with directors. Whom would you like to work with?“Do I say? What if they don’t want to work with me, it’ll be embarrassing! There are so many. But I’d love to work with Paul Thomas Anderson and Michael Haneke.”

The very smart and good people at the Talk Easy podcast brought us the extensive interview they did with PTA-alum Philip Baker Hall from a couple weeks ago and PBH talks quite a bit about the three films he did with Paul. If you're short on time, that stuff comes in right around the 45 minute mark, but the whole thing seriously warrants listening. Thanks to Sam and Nora from Talk Easy for laying this embarrassment of riches at our feet --

And the fact that you guys are pointing toward that—that clearly doesn't always happen. If you ended up in court, it would be a spectacular nightmare.Spectacular. I see it everywhere. Such animosity and bitterly dedicating years to destroying each other. You'll be in court and it'll be all about affairs and it'll be everything that doesn't matter. It's just awful, it looks awful. One of my favorite movies when it came out was There Will Be Blood, and I couldn't figure out why I loved this movie, I just loved this movie, besides the obvious talent of Paul T. and, you know, Daniel Day. But the next morning I woke up, and I went, Oh, my God, this whole movie is dedicated to this man and his hatred. It's so audacious to make a movie about it, and in life I find it just so sickening. I see it happen to friends—I see where the one spouse literally can't tell their own part in it, and is still competing with the other in some way and wants to destroy them and needs vindication by destruction, and just wasting years on that hatred. I don't want to live that way.

Xixaxers may also be interested in the following snippet (although not PTA-related):

When is the acting still exciting?I would say more in comedic stuff, where you're taking gambles. I can turn out the hits over and over and I just—my favorite movie is the worst-performing film of anything I've done, The Assassination of Jesse James. If I believe something is worthy, then I know it will be worthy in time to come. And there are times I get really cynical, you know. I spend a lot of time on design and even this sculpture folly I'm on, I have days when—it all ends up in the dirt anyways: What's the point? So I go through that cycle, too, you know? What's the point?

Tichenor said that one of the challenges in editing Boogie Nights was how to integrate long takes with coverage as well as figure out the answer to the question, "Whose story are we telling?"

This would become even more of an issue on their next collaboration, the operatic Magnolia, where, in the opening sequence, it was necessary to introduce all of the different characters and their connections, as well as establish rhythm and theme.

While some of the shots in Magnolia were written into the script, others were shot five or six different ways and then altered in the editing room. Tichenor said that P.T. Anderson uses Microsoft Word to write his scripts, doesn't really adhere to traditional format, and does "all the things you're told never to do" as far as writing camera directions into his scripts. Of course, the editor noted that "Anderson can get away with it."

During post, Tichenor and P.T. Anderson went back and forth over the film's 188-minute runtime. Whenever Tichenor asked if there was anything Anderson would consider cutting from the film, Anderson responded, "'Like what, Dylan? What would you cut?'" Tichenor then related that "about two years later, I get a text from Paul saying, 'Magnolia’s playing on TV. It's too long. Great, thanks a lot, Dylan.'"

There Will Be Blood (2007)

After Magnolia, Tichenor and P.T. Anderson next collaborated on what has recently been named by The New York Times as the best film (so far) of the 21st century: 2007's There Will Be Blood, which earned multiple Academy Award nominations, including one for Tichenor. Unlike their first two collaborations, which were multi-character narratives with lots of parallel action, TWBB is, in the editor's words, "a different kind of beast."

From the start, Tichenor and P.T. Anderson approached the project like a horror film, employing "gothic shot framing and trying to build tension without a lot of cuts." This methodology even factored into the font that was used for the titles. "The cuts that are more nerve-wracking to me are the slower, quieter ones," Tichenor continued. "There's a big spotlight on, 'Now I'm changing perspective; now I'm showing you something else.'"

He explained that because the character of Daniel Plainview was so off-putting and inhuman—in Tichenor's words, "a huge ass"—one of the challenges was eliciting empathy from the story. He and P.T. Anderson approached this problem through the character of H.W., Daniel's adopted son, whose perspective of the action they tried to bring into focus in every scene. "I kept asking Paul for more shots of H.W.," Tichenor said. "The same stuff is happening, but let's watch it through his point of view."

P.T. Anderson obliged, even adding scenes of the two bonding. (Here's a deleted one; it's the first of the three clips.)

In contrast to quieter scenes, the editor feels as though "action functions more like [a] mosaic, where you have all the little pieces. When it's good, you get movement and flow."

Regarding the decision as to when to drop the sound out during the above set piece, Tichenor said that, beyond wanting to make sure that what had just happened (H.W. losing his hearing) was clear to the audience, it also was a way to bring the audience back into H.W.'s point of view and "keep that thread" of showing events through someone other than Daniel's eyes.

Tichenor also talked about the strategy underlying the sequence's rhythm.

"It was not a fast movie," he said. "[In this sequence], we wanted to do set-up, set-up, static shots, then a long, handheld walk in...and from there, we wanted it to snap up." In fact, while cutting the seven-minute set piece, Tichenor found that there weren't as many angles as he wanted to use. As a result, he constructed some of them by punching in and out of different takes. "There are more angles than there were actual shots," he said. For example, when H.W. is blown back by the explosion, Tichenor made use of what he referred to as "...little repeated action things," i.e. quick cuts of the same footage, in order to add velocity to the sequence.